


What Could Have Been

by xjEstelli



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xjEstelli/pseuds/xjEstelli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am not the girl who made the brave decision to take her father's place in the army. I was not the one who stumbled in the first day of training. It was not me who worked hard and motivated the new recruits to improve dramatically, and it was not my crazy plans that saved all of China. Yet there I watched from the shadows as one who was just like me did all of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Could Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time trying my hand at more classical Chinese writing, but of course still staying true to my own style.
> 
> This is about another girl who also takes her father's place in the army, and discovers a fellow sister (Mulan) during her time there. Not a heroine's story, not Romanticized or fantasized at all. Just life.
> 
> As always, thanks to user Marubien for being my unofficial beta reader and official fangirl friend, no matter that we are literally worlds apart.

The morning sun lingered near the horizon. It was another day, just like the day before that and the day before that. They were all the same; they blurred into one another perpetually. I stood at my place in the fields. I knew of nothing else except of how I put my buried my soul into the land. I would forever bury my soul into this land.

Or so I thought. The sun climbed higher in the sky. I methodically made my way through the fields. The sweat came on time; the distance I worked through the same as any other day. I did not think about how some viewed my work as miserable and lowly. I did not think about how grateful I should be to be alive. I did not think at all.

Once in a while, when I felt like my back was splintering more than usual, I would straighten up and look far away, a reprieve from staring at the crops right at my feet. A poet would be inspired by my position, seeing acres of undisturbed land all around and infinite sky. I just saw acres of undisturbed land all around and infinite sky.

I was by myself in the field as per normal. Occasionally I would see my neighbor in the next field over. We did not speak or acknowledge each other's presence, but I would occasionally hold out my hand and see which of my thick fingers would cover him entirely.

It was a little over an hour when I was called back into the house. I trudged through the door, irritated and only slightly curious as to what the disruption to my daily routine was. My mother was at the table, calmly cracking nuts into a bowl. She did not tell me to sit and I did not. I stood, waiting.

"I have thought about this for some time now," she said, then paused. I waited. We never talked. There was never anything important to talk about. There was no reason for me to start.

"I have decided you will be marrying Ren Cong," she said. "It has already been arranged."

I stood there, staring. I was not expecting this. Ren Cong was the person I sometimes covered my thumb with. His teeth jutted in every direction ever known. When he wasn't in the fields, he was at a tea house in town. We lived next to each other. We were practically cousins. When we were children, he would weave mud and insects into my hair. I always figured he would be the last person I would marry.

I continued to stare and she continued to look the way she always did, hardened features deeply creased into her head.

"It will be a good thing," she said, her eyes boring back. "Yes, it will be most beneficial. We can combine the fields and still have you come back here to take care of things. It is trouble enough, with your father ill in bed and these three mouths to feed." Her eyes flickered to my younger sister Jia Qi who was silently sweeping the floor, my youngest brother Wei Qi whom she was prodding out of the way, and the imaginary presence of my younger brother Jie Qi who was off at school. "I should not have to watch the fields be left to rot from the kitchen. Twice the field and twice the manpower. A beneficial match indeed."

Then she was done talking to me and I marched back to the fields to contemplate her logic. I did not understand. I was to marry the last person I wanted to marry, and on top of that, I still had to come back and work in my family's fields. I assumed I would be forever be in my family's fields or a foreign one of my husband's. Not both.

I was at the crops again but harder, faster, in a more feverish manner. Things flew before my eyes and through my brain. They kept flashing by and did not stop until noon, not even when I heard the pounding of drums. Or maybe the percussion was just the blood beating in my face.

When I came back this time, my mother was waiting at the door. I did not meet her eye. When I was within hearing distance, she called, "The war effort is requiring one man from every family to join the army. Your father took the notice. You know his condition."

I was at the door by then. I was curious as to where she was going with this, but I kept an uncaring expression on my face. Sweat trickled down my skin and I just wished to get out of the sun.

She kept talking, no breath ever wasted. "Rui Qi, you go in his place. We are getting everything ready."

There was no point in having a mouth for anything other than eating. Whatever my mother said was final. Jia Yi was already gathering things in a bag. My mother fingered a string of cash.

"You go to the market and get equipment. Or no," she decided, "you do not know what to purchase. I'll go. You leave the next morning."

Just like that, everything was concluded. I served meal to my father and myself when she left. He was absentminded, though I was sure he knew what was taking place. Then I was in the fields for the third time, lost in the same rhythm, pretending nothing had changed. I was still forceful in my motions, but it was different, because this conscription suddenly seemed less bleak than the alternative. My fate had switched twice in one day like an indecisive wife. Out of nowhere, two futures had been presented to me; one as a wife, continuing to farm away in this life which had no beginnings or endings, just middles, but worse; or one in the army, disguised as a man, heading off to war with a deadly secret already a part of me. But the choice was already made for me before I could say anything. The only choice I had was whether to look forward to it or not.

I continued my work in the fields.


End file.
